Text not lining up in word

Aligning text in Microsoft Word is one of the primary features of the popular app. Many users tend to use the Justify option to get the job done, but there may come a time when it fails to work. The question is, then, what can be done to get this issue under control? There are a few things we can do, and luckily for you, we have the sauce. Just know we’re going to focus on the latest version of Microsoft Word in this article. But that shouldn’t be a problem if you’re an advanced user.

If Justify Text or Paragraph is not working in Microsoft Word, then here are the steps you need to take to fix the issue:

1. Open the preferred Microsoft document
2. Choose the paragraph you want to Justify
3. Navigate to Advanced Find
4. Go to the Replace tab

1] Open the preferred Microsoft document

To begin, you must launch the affected document. To do this, open Microsoft Word on your Windows computer, then you should see a list of recent documents. The one you want should be in that list, so seek it out, then click on it to open.

2] Choose the paragraph you want to Justify

In order to select the paragraph, please click and hold the left mouse button at the beginning of the paragraph, then drag to the end, and release. If the texts are highlighted, then you can be sure the paragraph has been selected.

3] Navigate to Advanced Find

How do we get this done? Well, simply look to the top-right corner of the document. You should see the Find icon in that section. Just click on the arrow next to it then select Advanced Find.

4] Go to the Replace tab

After you’ve fired up the Advanced Find section, you are required, then, to select the Replace tab. From there, go to the Find box, then enter the following:

^p

Finally, hit Replace All. Ensure the Replace With field is 100 percent empty before adding anything to it. The problem with the inability to Justify should now be solved once and for all, or until next time.

Alternatively, use the Word Advanced Options to justify Text & Paragraphs

Another way to get things working again is to take advantage of the Advanced Options section via the Microsoft Word settings area. So, let us look at how to get this done right now.

First thing, you must navigate to the Options area of Microsoft Word. To do this, click on File from the top-left corner of the document, then from there, select Options to fire up a new window.

Via the left menu, you should see several tabs to choose from, but you only need to click on Advanced. It is located below Ease of Access and above Customize Ribbon, so you cannot miss it.

Finally, you’ll be required to navigate to the section named, Layout options for. Below it, please tick the box next to Don’t expand character spaces on a line that ends with SHIFT Return, then hit the OK button.

That’s it, your problems with Justifying text in Microsoft Word should now be rectified.

Why is my Justify not working in Word?

We cannot say what exactly is the cause behind the issue where it’s impossible to Justify text or a paragraph in Microsoft Word. What we do know is that this is a common problem, which is why we are confident the fixes were going to discuss will work.

What is paragraph alignment in Microsoft Word?

Paragraph alignment is basically a font formatting technique that can be used before or after writing a text. With this feature, users can Align Left, Right, Center, and Justify.

How do I get my paragraphs to line up in Word?

This is super easy. Simply place the insertion point at the preferred spot in the paragraph, document, or table that you wish to align. From there, you must press CTRL + I. If you want to align the text right, press CTRL + R, and if left is the best option, then hit CTRL + L, and that’s it.

Read: How to remove a Watermark in Microsoft Word.

Right-click, and then click Adjust List Indents. Change the distance of the bullet indent from the margin by clicking the arrows in the Bullet position box, or change the distance between the bullet and the text by clicking the arrows in the Text indent box.

How do I fix bullet alignment in Word?

Click one of the alignment options, which are small icons with tiny lines, in the “Paragraph” section of the ribbon/toolbar. Click the “Right Alignment” button to right-align the bullets, click the “Center Alignment” button to center the bullets.

How do I turn on automatic numbering in Word?

Turn on or off automatic bullets or numbering

1. Go to File > Options > Proofing.
2. Select AutoCorrect Options, and then select the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
3. Select or clear Automatic bulleted lists or Automatic numbered lists.
4. Select OK.

How do I fix number alignment in Word?

Word doesn’t align the numbers as expected.

1. Click anywhere inside the list.
2. From the Numbering dropdown (in the Paragraph group), choose Define New Number Format (at the bottom).
3. In the resulting dialog, change the Alignment setting from Left to Right, as shown in Figure G.

How do you align text in Word?

Change text alignment

1. Place the insertion point anywhere in the paragraph, document, or table that you want to align.
2. Do one of the following: To align the text left, press Ctrl+L. To align the text right, press Ctrl+R. To center the text, press Ctrl+E.

What is page number alignment?

If you let Word create a table of contents, table of figures, or index for you, you will see that, by default, it puts the page numbers at the right page or column margin, with a row of dots between the titles and the page numbers. To do this, it uses a right-aligned tab stop with a period leader.

What is word aligned?

Bitext word alignment or simply word alignment is the natural language processing task of identifying translation relationships among the words (or more rarely multiword units) in a bitext, resulting in a bipartite graph between the two sides of the bitext, with an arc between two words if and only if they are …

How do I indent without tab?

Don’t use Tab to indent paragraphs in a Word document

1. From the Format menu, choose Paragraph.
2. Click the Indents And Spacing tab.
3. In the Indention section, select First Line from the Special control’s drop-down list.
4. Specify the size of the indention using the By control’s drop-down list.

One of the most common mistakes that people make while formatting a document in Word is to use spaces to align text. Many of us have been frustrated by things not lining up perfectly, and we’re left dissatisfied by the slightly meandering edges.

Because proportional-font characters take up different amounts of space, the text in that font cannot be aligned correctly using spaces. Using tabs will ensure that your text is aligned perfectly and is easy to modify if you change your mind!

The chief advantage to using tabs rather than spacing is that after the tabs are in your document, you can move or change the tab stops and then the selected text moves or realign. Each of the tab settings that you create or modify are specific to that paragraph. And remember, a new paragraph is created every time you press Enter. That means that you’ll have to select multiple paragraphs and create tabs stops for all of them, or you could create different tab stops for different paragraphs to get that perfect look!

Word documents are set up with default tab stops every 1/2-inch across the document, but you can set your own tab stops anywhere you choose. In fact, there are several different types of tab stops that you can use. Ever wonder what that little button in the upper-left where the rulers intersect does? You can click it and toggle through the tab options!

Left-aligned: Begins test at the tab stop (This is the default tab setting).

Center-aligned: Centers text on the tab stop.

Right-aligned: Ends the text at the tab stop.

Decimal: Center the text over decimal point for a list of numbers.

Bar: Creates a vertical line through a selected paragraph at the tab stop.

To try this out for yourself, you’ll want the ruler to be visible. Simply click on the View Tab and check the Ruler box in the Show Group.

Watch our Word Expert demystify the power of tab stops and perfect alignment! You can even create leaders to help the reader easily scan across the page.

Update: 5/10/2017

We had a site visitor (thank you William) recently ask about aligning text to the right of a page. We thought a short video would help users that would like to accomplish what William was requesting. We hope this helps you too. 

We’ve got all sorts of Microsoft Office training available. Check out our free trial to see our many videos and attend a free training webinar taught by an expert.

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Word

Most of the time, we want the text in a Microsoft Word document to automatically wrap, that is, to move to the next line when it is too long to fit on one line. Word wrap is great, except when it breaks up text we want to stay together, such as dates, names, phone numbers, phrases, formulas, titles, or other text that should remain together on the same line. Fortunately, Word has some easy ways to keep text together. To learn these tricks to keep text together in Microsoft Word, continue reading or watch my how-to video:

Some examples of text you might want to keep together and not break up on separate lines:

• September 2, 2019
• Christopher A. Jones, Ph.D.
• (555) 123-4567
• State-of-the-art

Your options for keeping text together in Microsoft Word include:

• Non-breaking spaces
• Non-breaking hyphens
• Non-breaking paragraphs & lines

Non-Breaking Spaces & Non-Breaking Hyphens

The common solution: what most people do to keep text together is move to the beginning of the text and press [Enter] to start a new line. This is fine until any of the text changes and causes breaks in the wrong place. Now you’re wasting time going back to remove these extra lines when you no longer need the forced break to the text. And this manual approach doesn’t work well if you have paragraph formatting or styles that add space between paragraphs.

The right solution: keep text together with special characters. Specifically, delete the spaces or hyphens and replace normal spaces and hyphens with non-breaking spaces or non-breaking hyphens:

• Non-breaking space: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Spacebar]
• Non-breaking hyphen: [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [Hyphen]

As the name implies, non-breaking characters connect the text together, and the entire phrase or group of characters will all automatically move to the next line together but only as needed.

To view non-breaking space and hyphen characters in a document, click Show/Hide in the Paragraph group (Home tab). Word represents non-breaking space characters with a degree symbol (°) and non-breaking hyphen characters with a double‑length hyphen (these are a bit harder to distinguish from regular text).

Non-Breaking Paragraphs and Lines

Next, let’s go one step further. When you don’t want a paragraph or even several lines of text to break between two pages, don’t press multiple [Enter] keys to move the text to the next page. Instead, try the following Word techniques to keep text automatically together:

1. Select the paragraph or section of text you want to keep together.
2. On the Home tab in Word, click the Paragraph group’s dialog launcher (the small arrow at the bottom-right of the group).
3. Pick the Line and Page Breaks
4. Check the Keep lines together option, and click OK.
5. If you have multiple paragraphs selected, for instance, a title with following text, also click on Keep with next which will keep the paragraphs together on the same page.

Bonus Word Tricks

To find non-breaking spaces and non-breaking hyphens in your text, use the Find feature as follows:

1. On the Home tab, click the Find icon in the Editing group on the right or press the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl] + F.
2. In the Navigation Pane to the left, enter one of the following: ^s to find non-breaking space; ^~ to find non-breaking hyphens.
3. Use the Navigation Pane to move through the results.

Make sure you have the Show/Hide non-printing characters features turned on so you can see the hidden characters for these non-breaking symbols.

Discover more ways to save time editing and formatting your Word documents at: TheSoftwarePro.com/Word.

© Dawn Bjork, MCT, MOSM, CSP®, The Software Pro®
Microsoft Certified Trainer, Productivity Speaker, Certified Speaking Professional

Dawn Bjorkhttps://www.TheSoftwarePro.com

A Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) and Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), Dawn Bjork is known as The Software Pro® for her work as a productivity speaker, software trainer, virtual presenter, and author of numerous training courses and videos. In addition to these credentials, Dawn is also a certified Microsoft Office Specialist Master (MOSM) and Certified Virtual Presenter (CVP).
When she’s not busy sharing her expert knowledge on software with the world, Dawn can be found hiking the Colorado mountains, trying to master Pilates, or attempting to play golf.